DNA testing can identify Cherokee only. I am 12% Indigenous American. I am 9% East Asian. All American Indians have East Asian DNA, with Cherokee having most as they are believed to be last to walk across the Bering Strait to North America 13,000 years ago. A 12% Comanche or Flathead would have much less than 9% East Asian DNA. Genelex Labs in Seattle will provide for me at no cost, a document that says they are 99.9999 certain I am 1/8 Cherokee. The Cherokee Nation accepts no lab documents for anyone proving ethnicity.
"Black Dutch" was a generic term many southeastern Indians used in an attempt to avoid a move to Oklahoma. I've read about US mixes visiting Europe seeking information on Black Dutch, Black German and Black Irish. Locals have no idea what Americans are talking about.
Cherokee law says if the chain is broken by denial, no Cherokee has any claim to Cherokee residence. I know card-carrying Choctaw who are of 1/512 blood. I know card-carrying Lumbee Indians of North Carolina who can be Indigenous of any Nation and Sub-Saharan African-Caucasian. I very likely could gain admission to the Lumbee Nation. I'm certain Elvis Presley could have.
SBI, I believe you have been misinformed. DNA testing cannot identify tribes. It can identify blood groups that may lead to the assumption that one has tribal affiliation territorially. The Cherokee actually filed an injunction versus the many DNA testing companies to stop naming Cherokee in favor of Indigenous American. The Cherokee tribal affiliation claims were so common among Americans in the last 100 years that it became an anthropological phenomenon. In fact, the Cherokee tribe showed that once indigenous blood has been diluted to less than 1/64th it can no longer be confirmed to actually be native American. The other affiliations such as your Black Dutch have the same percentage of chance being falsely identified as indigenous American. The Cherokee lawyers provided clear evidence that different DNA testing can provide completely different results.
Having Native American ancestors or Indigenous American DNA does not make someone a Native American tribal citizen
There are differences between a person’s genetic, political, and cultural identities. Native American tribal members are citizens of their nations. This is a political and cultural identification rather than a genetic identification, similar to being a citizen of any other country. In the United States, there are more than 570 federally recognized tribal nations and over 60 state-recognized tribes. There are also some regionally-recognized tribal communities.
Individual tribal nations determine the criteria for tribal citizenship.
To determine tribal citizenship, tribal nations determine the legitimacy and strength of someone’s family connections. For many tribal nations, this means tracing a person’s lineage back to someone on tribal citizenship rolls from the late 19th to early 20th centuries (like the Dawes Rolls). Sometimes a “percent of blood,” called blood quantum, is also used.
Blood quantum is not how tribal nations have historically determined who is a tribal member. Rather, blood quantum was created and later used by the United States government to dispossess Native American people of their lands and civil liberties. It was not until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 that the United States began requiring tribal nations to use blood quantum to determine tribal citizenship.
It’s also important to recognize that some people have strong cultural or family connections to a tribe without being a tribal citizen. There are many reasons for this, including issues of parental consent and paper genocide. People in this position may be considered Native American because they have strong cultural and family connections.
Native American ancestors
Claiming to be Native American because of a distant or unverifiable Native American ancestor contradicts a tribal nation’s right to sovereignty. In fact, so many people falsely claim to have a Cherokee great-grandmother that it’s been deemed an anthropological phenomenon.
This doesn’t mean that the presence of Native American ancestors is not an important feature of someone’s family history. However, there’s a crucial difference between the claims “I have Native American lineage” and “I am Native American.”
Indigenous American DNA
Although the criteria may differ between nations, no tribal nation considers Indigenous American DNA to be a legitimate claim to citizenship.
In part, this stems from traditional beliefs that kinship networks (family connections)—not ethnicity or DNA—determine who is Native American.
While Indigenous American DNA cannot be used to determine tribal citizenship, it can be vital in assisting Native American people who were separated from their tribal communities through forced adoption or the residential school system. The Association for American Indian Affairs reports that as many as one-third of all Native American children were separated from their tribal communities between 1941 and 1967. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 attempted to end the forced adoption of Native American children, but they were still separated from their tribal communities even after it was signed into law. Today, Native American children still make up a disproportionate part of the U.S. adoption and foster care system. DNA could help Native Americans affected by adoption or foster care re-establish their family connections. For reasons that include tribal sovereignty, Ancestry® does not break down DNA results by tribe, but we do provide an approximate geographical region (Indigenous Americas).
Results are not broken down by tribe
While our reference panel includes a large number of Native Americans, many people carry DNA from multiple Native American tribes as well as non-Indigenous DNA. This can make it difficult to accurately distinguish between different Native American tribes. Also, many Native Americans have some European ancestors. Ancestry selects only the parts of a person’s genome that we identify as being Native American, so we essentially "stitch together" small sections of Indigenous DNA to reconstruct bigger genomes.
Additionally, some Native American communities have limited participation in genetics research. This is due, in large part, to centuries of extractive and exploitative research practices that have rightfully led to distrust among tribal communities. To provide a tribal level of identification, Ancestry would need much more genetic information from these communities. But for reasons relating to tribal sovereignty, it also might not be ideal to break ethnicity down by tribe.
Why the Indigenous Americas region may not appear in your ethnicity estimate
It’s possible to have Native American ancestors, but not have the Indigenous Americas region in your ethnicity estimate. This is because there’s a difference between lineage and DNA.
A child receives 50% of each parent’s DNA, but they typically do not receive 50% of each parent’s ethnicity. This is due to the
randomness of genetic inheritance. For example, a parent with half Nigerian and half Indigenous American DNA may pass down more Nigerian DNA to their child (or vice versa). Over generations, the randomness of genetic inheritance results in more DNA being passed down from some ethnicities and others being lost entirely.
To further illustrate, let’s say you have a Native American great-grandmother who has 25% Indigenous American DNA. Although about 12.5% of your DNA comes from your great-grandmother, you might not have inherited her Indigenous DNA. Alternatively, you may have inherited such a small amount that it doesn’t appear in a DNA test.
The AncestryDNA test surveys over 700,000 locations in your DNA, but there is still a chance that we missed evidence of Indigenous American DNA. This is because you may have inherited genetic markers that AncestryDNA does not use to identify Indigenous American ethnicity. Additionally, some Native American communities are underrepresented in genetics research, largely due to distrust in tribal communities because of centuries of extractive and exploitative research practices.
The presence of Indigenous DNA does not make someone more or less Native American. Tribal citizenship is determined by tribal nations, not by DNA.
